President Donald Trump's vow to renegotiate the 23-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement with Mexico and Canada could result in worthwhile changes, U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke and Borderplex Alliance CEO Jon Barela said Monday as they took part in a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., to highlight the importance of U.S. trade with Mexico.

NAFTA, which took effect in 1994, "can be strengthened and improved," O'Rourke, D-El Paso, said in an interview before the Congressional Border Caucus' panel discussion. People who do business on the border would be the best people to recommend ways to improve NAFTA, he said.

The panel discussion, which included 10 congressional representatives from states along the U.S.-Mexico border and several border business and trade experts, was held on the first workday of the Trump administration as a way to send a message to the president that millions of jobs in the United States are tied to trade with Mexico, O'Rourke said.

Barela, who late last year became head of the Borderplex Alliance, a regional economic development organization based in El Paso, said several improvements can be made to NAFTA because the world has changed greatly since the agreement was enacted.

Areas that need to be changed are tied to the energy industry, particularly renewable energy; technology, especially as it relates to logistics; and border security, Barela said during the panel discussion, which was streamed on Facebook.

Trump has vowed to reopen NAFTA, but has not yet provided specifics of what he'd like to see in a revised pact.

Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have indicated they are willing to revisit the pact.

Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C., another panel participant, agreed that a number of NAFTA changes are needed.

NAFTA was negotiated before the proliferation of the internet and smartphones and that means restrictions on the flow of cross-border data need to be changed, Wilson said. Trade rules need to be simplified to allow more small businesses to trade with Mexico and labor rules need to be strengthened, he said.

Barela said he disagreed with Trump on removing the United States from the Trans-Pacific Partnership free-trade treaty with 11 other countries. The trade treaty was signed by President Barack Obama, but was never taken up by Congress.

He and O'Rourke said they also disagreed with a Trump-proposed "border tax" on goods manufactured outside the United States.

O'Rourke said the proposed border tax would hurt manufacturing jobs in the United States because many components of products assembled in Mexico are made at factories in the United States.

Barela said the trade tax would not only destroy jobs, but it also could "spark a trade war." Such a tax also would be passed on to U.S. consumers, making products more expensive, Barela said.